Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

I really wanted to like this book. I love retellings of fairy tales and I thought this feminist collection would be top tier. But when did feminism start to mean that every male character is after virginal women who they wish to exploit. The first story, The Bloody Chamber ,was graphic but I thought it was the best out of all that I read (and I gave it a good go before I gave up). I think the first story felt the most feminist due to

the strength of the mother, particularly at the end of the story

but every other story was filled with flimsy female characters and sex driven men (even in puss and boots the cats are the same). I actually had to stop because the back to back graphic nature of violence in sex was turning my stomach and making me feel like I wanted to vomit.

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oirving44's review against another edition

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challenging dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

Note to self: don't read anything else by Angela Carter

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soniajoy98's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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steveatwaywords's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Some have called Carter's works re-envisioning, but this suggests that she somehow sees something new or other in our fairy tale "classics," that she is updating them for modern mores. I don't think so. Carter's magic is more a re-discovering or an uncovering, an exposing of what we have always known but perhaps were anxious about saying quite so baldly. And she does more, still.

Voluptuous, sensual, misogynistic, violent, Carter's tale nevertheless offer a powerfully feminine opening of traditional sublimation. Now, the historical and developmental order of how we understand this may largely depend upon the angle of your glance. Was Little Red Riding Hood once an older adult tale that had over time been reduced to a children's admonition? Then Carter helps us see again what it always has been, no matter how well censored? Did Beauty and the Beast always have Jungian resonance, aspects of our psychological unconscious lying beneath, from which Carter tears the cloaking skin? And is the seductive power of these enduring tales only in their hinted allure, their enticing suggestibility, and not their lewd exposure?

However you reason it, the "suggestions" beneath are primally sensuous, physical, and self-absorbed. And Carter not only draws these meanings up to visibility, she also re-cloaks them in new story, themselves lush with ambiguity and suggestive in their own right. Most powerful of all, these indulgences, just as the reader's in immersing, push against our modern mentality, revise our framing, demand we question.

There is so little space between beauty and vulgarity in Carter's work: the labyrinthian style poses questions all its own. For whom are these stories? Always for us.

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jovianjournals's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.25

This book is probably the worst book I've read in my life.

Claiming to create a retelling of fairy tales, Angela Carter writes stories showing how women can take back some of the power in those fairy tales. Her ideas are great; the execution is horrifying and downright disappointing.

While she may have been going for a "Satire" approach, these short stories go too far and do not seem feminist to me in the least bit. Describing a girl's first period as being started because "a wolf... must have nibbled her cunt while she was sleeping" serves absolutely no purpose, and you cannot claim that the story is about "women taking their agency back" when half the stories are about teenagers or pre-pubescent teenagers willingly having sex with adult men/monsters.

Some reviews have claimed that these books are supposed to be read as the men's sexual desires actually representing the women's inner desires; thus, when the characters give in to the male's advances, they are really giving into their own. Through her stories featuring bestiality, pedophilia, incest, Carter basically asks the question "what if the claim that girls are really asking for it when they are raped were true?"

Furthermore, from a writing perspective I found her stories to be boring and not well written. Many praise her elaborate writing style, but it seems as though she is trying to hide the lack of substance in her stories with flowery writing. Some of the descriptions felt pulled straight out of a fanfiction. The plots of each short story are also severely lacking; even the stories which otherwise do better trying to present her messages fail due to disuse of characters and plot points.

This book should be marketed as erotica. If it were marketed as such, I'd say it's fine. But this is not a masterful genre-defying book of feminist prose; it's a collection of erotic rewrites of fairy tales. Some have a bit more meaning, but for the most part, it's just erotica. If you enjoy that, I'd encourage reading it! She certainly goes in depth describing the sex, and it probably composes at least a third of the book. But if you're looking for what the book markets itself as, I'd look elsewhere - though I do always encourage people to read things for themselves to decide.

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morgue666's review against another edition

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dark fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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melles_gothic_reads's review against another edition

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dark inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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